That miss the many-splendored thing.
Now that poem, it will be observed, is not unrelated in subject to the two lines quoted just above it. And yet, how it defies any effort to analyze it out into anything else than itself. Rhythm, cosmic picturings, the homely metaphors of the dusty road, all combine to place us in an attitude toward, to give us a feeling for, reality, which is different from, and nobler than, those of the man who has either never read this poem, never read the same message in other poetic language, or—what is more to the point—never managed to get for himself the same experience which dictated that poem.
For, after all, if I were to agree with Professor Gass that poetry (as a part of literature) is not a fine art, it would be because I think it more than a fine art. Because I think the function of poetry is not merely to be a verbal picture art or a verbal music art, but to be an organon of reconciliation between art and life. The best poems, I think, will be found to be those which alter our consciousness in such a way that our inward, and even our outward, lives are altered. The poet sees the world as we do not see it. Consequently, he can put a new complexion on it for us. The world is pluralistic, and so are we. Intellectually we may be of the twentieth century, but emotionally we may be born out of our due season. Then let the poet of that due season mediate to us the emotional life that we need. Living in America, we may, through him, reach Greece or India. By his aid we may conquer the real world; by his aid we may flee from it if it threatens to conquer us. By his aid alone we may get outside of our own skins and into the very heart of the world.
What, then, shall we say, when poetry offers to conduct us into a world of growing sieves, slim squares, powdered souls, cool, colorless struggles, the obstetrical adventures of white throats, and green and yellow dins?
I have heard of a book which explains the fourth dimension. If I ever get a chance to read that book, and if I find that I can understand the fourth dimension, I shall have another shot at the appreciation of this poetry. For I have a slumbering shadow of a pale-gray idea (if I, too, may wax poetic) that in the sphere of the fourth dimension a slim square would be a perfectly possible conception.
I shall arise and go home now and read some poems by the late Mr. Meredith who is popularly supposed to be obscure.
In Defense of Vers Libre
Arthur Davison Ficke
(A reply to “Spiritual Dangers of Writing Vers Libre” by Eunice Tietjens in the November issue of The Little Review)
The properly qualified judge of poetry can have no doubts about vers libre; if he doubts it, he is no judge. He belongs to that class of hide-bound conservatives who are unwilling to discard the old merely because it is old. He does not yet understand that the newest is always the best. Worst of all, he does not appreciate the value of Freedom.